


Romance Novels

by fransoun



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: M/M, but for magnus it's enough, fortunately rodimus knows a little about it, not as much as he'd like everyone to think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 20:20:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9200774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fransoun/pseuds/fransoun
Summary: Romance novels make terrible guides to romance.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Defaulters](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4645851) by [Enfilade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enfilade/pseuds/Enfilade). 



> I asked Enfilade if I could borrow the idea of a failed date on the observation deck and Magnus' list of words from the wonderful fic Defaulters in the amazing series Standards Compliant, and she kindly agreed.

Rodimus had asked Ultra Magnus on another date.

It _was_ a date. Rodimus had been very clear about that this time, as per paragraph 6 of their personal relationship memorandum. He'd used the word 'date' no fewer than seven times in his private message to Magnus.

Magnus had smiled when he read it. (He was doing that a lot more these days, it seemed, and the pistons in his jaw no longer ached when they turned up the corners of his mouth.) He had shared his "flag-to-my-attention" list of words for his heads-up display - "date" and "couple" and "courtship" - with Rodimus, who had eagerly gotten to work helping him expand it. Magnus, face burning, had allowed "frag" onto the list - after all, if Rodimus mentioned it, Magnus _definitely_ wanted to know - but he had drawn the line after that.

Magnus had a second list of words he was compiling, too, one he hadn't shared with Rodimus. It was a list of "relationship" words - words like "affection" and "longing" and "desire" - and next to each word, his own fumbling, halting attempt at defining it for himself. Since becoming... _involved_ with Rodimus, Magnus had found himself experiencing emotions he had never experienced before, emotions the words in his vocabulary had proven insufficient to describe. 

"Love" was the worst of them, an inadequate, inexact _mess_ of crossed-out lines and cross-references and corrections, additions and arrows and annotations.

Ultra Magnus _hated_ messes.

But if Rodimus had agreed to use clear and exact language with him (which, as Magnus knew from reading his reports, was a constant struggle for his captain) then Magnus could hardly do less for him. Besides, Magnus _wanted_ to accurately describe his emotions, wanted to lay them out for Rodimus in the precisest of terms. He wanted to be able to tell Rodimus exactly what he was coming to mean to him. 

Because Magnus might not know for sure what that was yet, but it was definitely _a lot_.

He arrived at the observation deck early. Someone - presumably Rodimus - had hung a sign on the door that read _Reserved for PRIVATE Meeting!!!_

Magnus corrected his initial assumption. Only Rodimus could so shamelessly flaunt the basic tenets of grammar and punctuation so many times in so few words. 

The sign was crooked. He straightened it, smiling again.

Inside, observation deck was empty. Magnus stepped through the door, and it slid shut with a soft swish behind him.

The lights inside had been dimmed down low. Outside, a nebula swirled, its ionized gases casting their brilliant hues through the transparent plasteel of the viewing windows to splash against the floor, the couches, the walls, glowing faintly in greens and blues and reds of every shade.

Magnus frowned. He didn't think they'd been scheduled to jump anywhere near a nebula. He pulled up the ship's itinerary and input his command codes.

Rodimus had made the most recent change to their schedule - Magnus cross-referenced it with his personal inbox - less than a cycle after Magnus had replied in the affirmative to Rodimus' request, changing the coordinates of their jump from a sector of empty space to this - _this_ \- 

...well. Minimus Ambus was a romantic at spark, but he wasn't always a very good one. He never would have thought of this.

His captain - _co_ -captain - had also assigned the evening shift's engine crew the task of deploying the scoops to gather raw materials from the swirling dust around them while the quantum generators recharged. Magnus felt a ribbon of pride, mixed in with that _other_ feeling again, the one there was just so _much_ of, curl warmly around his spark. Rodimus had planned ahead, acting as both a good captain _and_ a good...a good...well, whatever they were.

Magnus only wished that he'd been able to do the same. But there were no instruction manuals for romance, no diagrams for dating. It turned out the Autobot Code didn't address all aspects of the Cybertronian condition after all. He didn't even have a Tailgate ten-point plan.

So Magnus had turned to the only 'experience' he had.

Back before the war, when he was just - before he was Ultra Magnus, he had read romance novels. He had read them shamefully, in secret, but he had read them anyway, read them like he was starving.

(There. An analogy. Rung would be proud of him.)

Now, he tried to imagine their encounter like a scene from one of his books.

He would be standing here as Rodimus entered. Rodimus would advance on him in that way he did when he was ( _maddeningly, infuriatingly_ ) aware of his own attractiveness and its effect on his...advancee, all slink and heat and - and - 

(Here Magnus faltered, coming up hard against his own lack of experience with both romance and figurative language alike, but he pushed determinedly onwards.) 

\- and seductive-like. Magnus would stumble back until his back hit the wall. Pressed up against it, he would stare down at Rodimus, trembling, as Rodimus pressed up against him and pulled him down into a kiss…

Inside the Magnus armor, Minimus shivered from head to toe.

It was a plan. It wasn't a plan up to his usual standards, with appendices for every contingency and codicils for every appendix, but he could hardly ask Rodimus to wait until he came up with something that was - 

The door slid open again, and Magnus ended a thought in a way he'd never ended a thought in his entire life.

\- _good enough_.

Because Rodimus looked…

...Rodimus looked _breathtaking_. 

Somehow, that bit of figurative language came easier than the ones before. Perhaps because Magnus had actually felt his fans stall in his chest.

But Rodimus had always managed to look good to Magnus.

He looked good when his finish was up to Autobot Code standards, of course. Magnus had always assumed that matte finish, which rendered plating blemish-free without the excessive gloss that could distract or draw attention at an inopportune moment, was the most attractive a mechanism _could_ look. True, there had always been a certain... _appeal_ to Rodimus when he was all scratched and scuffed and battle-scarred, breathing hard after an intense bout of sparring, or perhaps a light skirmish. But Magnus had always assumed he was attracted to the physical evidence of a job well done, and that his hands only itched to put themselves on Rodimus' plating because he wanted to clean it.

But this...this was something else entirely.

Rodimus _gleamed_. He'd polished his plating until it shone, and all Magnus could do was stare.

"Hi," said Rodimus, and Magnus realized his mouth was hanging open. He shut it, fans stuttering back into motion as he felt his face begin to burn, and he struggled to find his - the Magnus armor's - voxcoder. 

"Good - good evening, Rodimus." 

_Primus_. Had that been _his_ voice? It had come out deeper than even Optimus', and he was stuttering almost as badly as his fans were. But Rodimus smiled at him anyway and started to make his way around the rows of couches to where Magnus stood by the window.

Magnus swallowed. This was it.

It was easier than he'd thought to take one step back, and then another, and then another. He hadn't actually meant to stumble, but he did, and he only realized when his back fetched up against the wall that at some point during his, ah, tactical retreat, he'd dimmed his optics.

He waited, then, to feel the warmth of Rodimus, the first brush of the speedster's EM field with his, and finally the touch of his plating against Magnus' own. He waited, and every moment felt like an eternity (the result of inaccurate readings from his chronometer, no doubt).

But the space in front of him remained cold and empty. Magnus relit his optics.

Rodimus still stood where Magnus had left him, spoiler drooping as low as Magnus had ever seen it. The ribbon that had wound round Magnus' chest tightened as though someone had grabbed hold of the ends and _pulled_ , and it cut deep into his spark.

"...Magnus? Did - did I mess up again?" Rodimus' face looked pained, and he sounded like someone was squeezing his spark, too. "I thought - I tried so hard to be clear this time…"

"No!" Magnus practically leapt forward, only to freeze when he saw Rodimus tense, desperation threatening to claw the ribbon - and his spark - to shreds. "No, you were! This is what I want."

"Then why did you…?" Rodimus gestured at the wall behind him, and at the distance between them.

Magnus felt utterly wretched. He slumped where he stood. "I thought - I thought that was what I was supposed to do. I thought you would advance on me and I would retreat from you and then you would come and take what you wanted from me."

Rodimus frowned. "But what do _you_ want?"

"That - that is what I want."

But Rodimus only looked even more unhappy. Magnus had to explain, had to get Rodimus to _understand_ somehow…

"I read romance novels," he blurted out. "Before the war."

Now Rodimus looked confused, but at least some of that awful hurt had gone from his face. "What?"

"I have no...experiences of my own to draw upon, but I read - " Magnus' faceplates burned. Part of him would almost have rather stripped down to his irreducible self in front of the entire crew. " - I read extensively. Based on the existing parameters of our relationship and the circumstances of this encounter, I attempted to deduce the most likely course our meeting would take and follow it."

As Magnus fumbled his way through his halting explanation of what he had thought would occur, Rodimus listened intently, helm cocked, eyes bright and fixed on Magnus. "Provided, of course, that both parties were fully consenting," Magnus finished, and then hastily added, "Which I am."

Rodimus waited a moment more after Magnus had finished speaking and then approached. He stopped in front of Magnus, not as close as Magnus wanted, oh, not nearly that close, but close enough to reach up and touch Magnus' face, thumb stroking gently across the high plane of his cheek as he looked up at him.

"You read romance novels?"

It wasn't the question Magnus had expected. Unsure how else to respond, he nodded.

"Oh, _Magnus_."

Magnus didn't know what that meant, but the heat of Rodimus' touch was intoxicating, so much better than the crawling, prickling burn of his own embarrassment and shame. He shuttered his optics and pressed his face into Rodimus' palm, trying to soak as much of that warmth into himself as he possibly could.

He felt - or thought he felt - the curve of a smile in his captain's EM field - but then the hand was gone, and Magnus didn't know if he could face opening his optics to the cold and empty space in front of him once more. 

When he finally did, Rodimus was standing across the room, arms crossed behind his back, staring out into space. Magnus didn't know what to do. He could feel the deck beneath his feet, but he might as well have been drifting through space himself for all the good it did him -

\- but then he noticed that Rodimus had assumed the parade rest position, and it set Magnus at ease. Whatever else they were, Rodimus was his captain, and Magnus was his commander, and that was enough to ground him, at least for now.

"So…" Rodimus said, and there was nothing captain-y about his voice now. "That's what you want?"

"Ye - ," Magnus began, and then his vocalizer locked up in his throat.

Because Rodimus _turned_ , and Magnus didn't know if he could have taken a breath even if he'd tried. Rodimus was all points and sharp edges, yes, but he had _curves_ , too, and now with every step Rodimus took Magnus wondered how that fact wasn't constantly the highest priority item in his HUD's queue. Rodimus - Magnus' addled processor scrambled for the right word - slunk- prowled- _advanced_ on his position, hips swaying in a manner that drew Magnus' optics just _there_ , and to the slim, enticing waist above them, ringed by softly pulsing biolights, and to the barest flash of thighs before they vanished into his armor below.

And his plating - Primus, his _plating_ \- polished to that almost mirror-like finish, caught the light of the nebula outside, and its colors slid across his armor, suffusing his reds and yellows with shades of the brightest blues, the deepest greens, and the richest purples, and reflecting the pinpoint white of the stars.

"You want me to walk towards you like _this_?" Rodimus purred, and Magnus' fuel pump was in his throat, so he just nodded, far more frantically than was becoming of the Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord - 

\- but he wasn't anymore. He was Rodimus' commander, and Rodimus was his captain.

"And you want me to pin you against the wall like _this_?"

And Ultra Magnus, ex-Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord, _that_ Ultra Magnus, almost laughed, because Rodimus was pressed firmly up against him now, oh, from head to toe, Magnus could feel every blazing inch of him, but a mech of Rodimus' build could never have held Ultra Magnus there, could never even have held Minimus Ambus, loadbearer that he was - 

\- and yet in spite of all logic, Ultra Magnus could never have pushed him away.

"And you want me to pull you down into a kiss like _this_?"

And two warm hands wrapped around the stacks on either side of his helm, and Ultra Magnus - Minimus Ambus - went gladly, unresistingly down with them.

Some time later, Ultra Magnus dragged himself away from Rodimus' lips, and it felt like he had to fight against the inexorable pull of gravity to do it, but he had to, just for a moment, because there was one question he had to ask -

"Rodimus, how long did you reserve the observation deck for?"

Rodimus' smile lit up Magnus like his own private sun.

"For the rest of the night."

"Ah. Good. That's - that's good."

Rodimus' smile burned even brighter as he pulled Magnus back down to him again.


End file.
